"But you needsomething." She winced. "Because those cuts looked pretty bad."
"They're not." Hell, they weren't even cuts, but I didn't want to get into it. Looking to shake her off, I glanced toward the house. "You really wanna do me a favor? Stop in and say 'hi' to Bishop."
She brightened. "You think he'd want me too?"
"He let you in the gate, didn't he?"
"Yeah, but only through the intercom. It's not like he came out in person or anything."
"Then at least stop by," I said, "you know, as a thanks for opening the gate."
Bishop wouldn't be thankingmeafterwards, but at this point, it was better to have him dealing with her than me. And besides, I hadn't been the person who let Amber in.
When she finally turned and headed toward the house, I shut the garage door and threw on a dark jacket. A moment later, I was heading out the side door – and not only to escape Amber.
Maybe I couldn’t see Chloe. But with a simple walk around the block, Icouldsee her house, and I figured, hey, it was better than nothing.
But it wasn't. Because what I saw when I got there didn't exactly make me happy.
Chapter 23
I was standing on the sidewalk in front of Chloe's place. I'd just passed her driveway when I heard something that made me stop dead in my tracks. It was the sound of a garage door opening. I turned and saw a slick black Mercedes backing out of Chloe's bonus garage.
The car looked a lot like a certain dark sedan that I'd seen outside her place a few weeks earlier. The driver ofthatcar had been a total douchebag.
And somehow, I just knew it was the same guy. Same car, same location – it had to be.
The night I'd seen him, he'd given his name as Leo. Other than that, I still didn't know who the guy was, but I had pretty good idea that he was her landlord or something.
The one and only time that we'd talked, he'd spent half the time griping about the electrical system and the other half offering me honeys – as he called them – for a price.
Chloe had never mentioned the guy, and after the whole basement fiasco, I sure as hell wasn't going to be grilling her about him now.
But standing there on the sidewalk, a new thought hit me. Maybe I couldn’t grillher, but I could grillhim. Hell, I wouldn't even have to be aggressive about it. From what I'd seen the last time, the guy loved to talk, especially about himself.
I stood where I was, betting on the fact that he'd stop the car when he spotted me. Sure enough, rather than backing out onto the street, he stopped the car at the end of the driveway and leaned his head out the open window.
"Hey neighbor," he said as I approached the car. He was an overly tanned man, maybe in his fifties or sixties. He had poufy blonde hair and big white teeth. He wore a shiny grey suit, but no tie. He was grinning. "You liking the hood?"
What hood? The neighborhood? I glanced around. If this was a hood, I was a housewife. I'd seen the real hood, and it looked nothing like this.
I shrugged. "It's alright. So, you're back in town, huh?"
The last time I'd seen him, he'd mentioned that he traveled a lot – for funandbusiness, or so he claimed.
"Eh, just for the day," he said. "Gotta check on my investments, you know?"
No. I didn't know. But this would be a good time to find out. "Yeah? What kind of investments?"
He flicked his gaze toward the house. "Well, likethisplace for one."
I nodded. "So you're the landlord, huh? Renting the place out?"
"You could say that." His smile widened. "I got people lined up like you wouldn't believe."
I looked again toward the house. It was a two-story Tudor – the house of a banker, a doctor, or maybe a nice, respectable family of five, assuming they had a decent chunk of money.
It hit me all over again that the house was an odd place to find a single girl like Chloe. Sure, I knew she came from money, but the house was still way too big for one person.
